The film was shot on the Canon 5D Mark II using the 24-105 L lens. Please make sure to view it in full screen for the best experience.

Spread from the article in Sotokoto

I have recently provided 33 images for an article in the April issue of the Japanese magazine Sotokoto. Last week a copy of the magazine arrived in the mail. Looks so cool with the Japanese graphics and typography!

Books exhibited at the Paris Cookbook Fair

Last weekend I attended the Paris Cookbook Fair, where two of the books I have designed were exhibited as nominees for the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. In the category Best Asian Cookbook the sushi book placed fourth. Considering that an estimated  26.000 food and wine books are published each year*, I am really happy with the result. The exhibition was a great opportunity to meet with writes, designers and publishes, and to gather inspiration for future book projects.

* Source: Gourmand World Cookbook Awards Yearbook 2010

Gourmand - Wold Cookbook Awards

I just received news that the two cookbooks I have designed, both won the Danish national competition in the prestigious Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2009.

Sushi – Lidenskab, videnskab & sundhed won in the category: Best Asian Cuisine Book.
(The book was recently published internationally as Sushi – Food for eye, the body & the soul)

Tang – Grøntsager fra havet won in two categories: Best Fish And Seafood Book and Best Book For Food Professionals.

Both books are now qualified for the international competition, where they will compete with the very best cookbooks from all over the world, at the Paris Cookbook Fair in February 2010.

Update: I recently learned that Sushi – Lidenskab, videnskab & sundhed is now shortlisted as one of the four best books in the international category Best Asian Cuisine Book.

Inspiration

Haeckel was a German biologist from nineteenth-century most famous for his work and drawings on radiolarians, a group of single-celled zooplankton, with beautiful and intricate mineral skeletons. They are found throughout the ocean, and their skeletal remains cover large portions of the ocean bottom. With their extensive variations of interesting symmetrical shapes I saw these  organisms as a great modeling challenge, that could possibly produce some really nice images.

Illustrations from "Radiolaria" (1887) by Ernst Haeckel

Creating the movie

The basic topological modeling was created in TopMod. A great piece of open source software, perfect for this type of geometric/organic modeling.

Modeling in TopMod

Selection of models in TopMod

Final modeling, texturing, animation and rendering was done i Maya. Compositing was done i AfterEffects.

The music in the film is Glacier by Supersole. Available at Opsound, the track is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. Hence the movie is released under the same license.

Whats next

Future developments on the project will focus on more variations in models, color variations, light, particles and radical experiments on the final look of the film.

The Chromascope site has been updated with a photography section, and new projects has been added. Notably a collection of landscape photography from the Faroe Islands. More projects will be uploaded soon. There is also a new front page on the website.

The sushi book that I designed a few years ago, has been translated to English, and is now published by Springer Science+Business Media. I have designed a new cover for this version, added a lot of new images and design refinements.

Sushi: Food for the Eye, the Body and the Soul is being released in a beautiful hardcover edition, and has received amazing editorial reviews. Looking forward to see how it fairs with an international audience. You can read more about the book at the official website sushibook.net.

The book is now available to order at Amazon: US / UK.

The original Danish book is sold out, but a new edition is now being released by Nyt Nordisk Forlag. More about that in a separate post later.

This weekend I visited Norðurlandahúsið (The Nordic House) at the Faroe Islands, to help setup an exhibition by fashion designer Maria Louise Suhr. The exhibition presented her graduation project from the Design School in Kolding, a collection with swimsuits, shoes and bags inspired by the charter tourism of the 60’s.

A series of landscape photography from the islands, will be posted on the website soon.

Connected poster & closeups

The poster for the short film I directed with Jens R. Christensen is now being sold in a limited edition of only 73 numbered prints. The poster is designed by  Anders Baden Nielsen and Joaquim Marquès Nielsen from the design studio Barq. It is 66 cm x 100 cm and offset printed on nice thick 200g recycled paper.

Worldwide shipping available. Visit the webshop here: ov43.bigcartel.com

We have now launched the official website for our short film Connected, that I have directed with Jens R. Christensen. The website gives an in depth look behind the scenes. www.ov43.com